


The Night the Vapor Found Us

by Heirofpsyche



Category: Hotel Dusk
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Fluff and Smut, I have no idea what I was thinking with this, Like just suspense, M/M, Mild Horror, Nothing really scary, no beta we die like men, vaporwave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 03:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19142515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heirofpsyche/pseuds/Heirofpsyche
Summary: Kyle Hyde and Jeff Angel reunited after Hotel Dusk. Kyle went back to being a cop, and Jeff found himself a dead end job. This is the story of a night in their new lives in 1983.





	The Night the Vapor Found Us

Summer, 1983. 

The call came in four minutes before Jeff Angel was due to leave work. The night was still hot and heavy. It hadn’t rained for two months. The shrill ringing ricocheted in his head for several moments before he picked up the phone, putting on his best customer service voice - no easy feat now that it was fast approaching Midnight.  
“Night Flight Couriers, how can I help?”  
“Angel.”

It was Kyle. Jeff exhaled, dropping his corporate-moulded telephone voice in a heartbeat. Joy at hearing his voice quickly dissolved into twisted anxiety deep in his stomach; Kyle never called without reason. 

“What’s wrong?”  
“Gonna be real late home tonight,” the cop sounded weary, voice thick with exhaustion. Jeff felt a pang of fear shoot through him at the sound of Kyle’s voice, “got a situation at the mall.”  
“What’s going on?”

Kyle sighed. 

“Can’t tell you too much but,” he hesitated, “everyone who entered the mall in the last sixteen hours hasn’t come out. CCTV shows an empty mall.”  
“So what, is it a hostage situation?”  
“No idea yet. They could be holed up in one of the offices, but that seems odd...”  
“How come?”  
“Parking lot is full. I’m not talking a few last-minute stragglers; I’m talking staff, shoppers, security guards, management…gone. A whole day’s worth of visitors just vanished into thin air. Would they all fit in one of the offices? Probably not.”  
“Which mall is this?”  
“Can’t tell you that.”  
“Don’t you dare go in there.”  
“Angel…” Kyle sighed, “Look--”

\---

_Winter, 1981._

_Rain and ice and wind cutting through his thin denim jacket like a knife. Two years on the road, selling his designer clothes, his jewelry, his body when he had nothing else. Making ends meet and not always managing it. Renting a shitty apartment. Renting a shittier motel. Huddling under a blanket in a doorway. He knew all the neighborhood bums by name, each one regarding him with weary eyes and rotten teeth and a look of bewilderment when they saw such a pretty face smeared with dirt. How did he fall so far?_  
“Angel?”  
He would never forget the moment he looked up and saw that familiar face. Christmas Eve, 1981, huddled in the doorway of a sleeping Macy’s beside three other homeless. The strip of condoms in his pocket his last and only chance to make any money.  
“Kyle?”  
\---  
Summer, 1983. 

“No,” Jeff shook himself out of his reverie, blood running cold, “do not go in there. What if this is like...supernatural or something?”  
“Seriously? You scared that little green men are gonna whisk me away?” He could hear the smile in Kyle’s voice, and he resented it.  
“I don’t mean that,” Jeff protested testily, “I mean...like...what if it's some Bermuda Triangle shit?”  
“Angel, this is my job.”  
“Come home tonight,” he knew he sounded demanding, hated the whiny tone in his voice and hated the sigh that this elicited from Kyle even more, “fucking _come home_.”

The line beeped. Kyle swore.  
“I’ve gotta go, I’m outta change.”  
“Come home, Kyle.”  
“I will.”  
“I lov--”

The line went dead. 

\---

Jeff had been working part time at Night Flight for three months. Kyle had helped him get the job; arguing that he needed to start paying his way.

Even Jeff couldn’t talk his way out of that.

The pay was decent, the hours were shitty. He worked from 8pm to Midnight every night except Sundays. This meant that he got up late, spent the day cleaning their apartment or preparing dinner or shopping with his mediocre pay packet, only to spend a few precious hours with Kyle before he had to rush off to work. He was driving Kyle’s old beat-up car, wearing his old clothes, and doing as much as he could to make himself useful. He’d had a few modeling jobs, ended up in a couple of magazines, but it wasn’t enough to solely support him, so he worked the graveyard shift too.

He also spent his free time trying to avoid confrontation with his father. 

“Call your dad,” Kyle had said in the summer of 1982, back when they were just on the ‘item’ side of ‘roommates’ and before they became a fully-fledged couple. (Jeff had no idea how it happened, just remembered the sharp taste of orange juice and the rattle of the percolator one morning as Kyle had caught him on his way to work and kissed him breathless, tired eyes saying more at that moment than his voice could ever convey). 

“I can’t,” Jeff would always protest. The thought of crawling back home, tail between his legs and a half-hearted apology on his lips, always made him feel sick. He was a coward and he knew it. Kyle probably knew it, too; and God only knew why he stuck with Jeff the way he did. 

He punched his card and clocked out of Night Flight at a minute past midnight, making his way across the dim parking lot to his car. A couple of planes flew overhead, their tiny blinking lights reminding him that even now, when he felt completely alone, that he wasn’t. Not really. He took a deep breath and prayed to any God that would listen that Kyle would return home tonight. 

The delayed sound from the planes echoed in his ears; a subtle roar building to a cacophony of sound as the jet, hundreds of miles in the air, announced its presence to the world. As it passed, the darkness around him seemed to grow and intensify. He glanced around furtively, trying and failing to suppress a shiver.

He got in the car.

\---

_Christmas Day, 1981._

_“What the hell have you been doing?” Kyle’s voice was accusatory as he stared him out, “I haven’t seen you in years. Hell, I never thought I’d see you again after Dusk.”_

_Jeff shrugged, hair clean and tousled after his first shower in weeks, a fresh borrowed shirt on his back, nails no longer caked in city grime. The air in the tiny apartment was cool, the sheets beneath him white and soft and fresh as he sat on his rescuer’s bed._

_“You haven’t changed a bit. Thought you were gonna go home to ‘Daddy’, not end up on the streets.”_

_Kyle sounded frustrated. Jeff wondered why. He asked._

_“I’m not,” Kyle sighed, “I just...I thought you’d go make something of yourself. You said you were gonna go home, apologise to your father. Instead I find you sleeping rough on Christmas Eve?”_  
“I did go home,” Jeff murmured, “I just...didn’t stay there. Didn’t even go into the house. I posted the money I stole in the mailbox, left them a note--”  
“How considerate,” Kyle spat. Why was he so angry? Jeff’s failures had nothing to do with him. The younger man frowned.  
“Stop it,” he whimpered, “ It’s my fault that I stole the money in the first place, and it's my fault that I’m too much of a fucking coward to stand up and take the heat. You gave me a talking to in some seedy motel two years ago; you don’t know me. Why are you even helping me?” 

_Kyle paused at that, considered his question. Jeff could see the doubt in his eyes, as though the thought had just occurred to him; ‘why pick this dumb kid up?’_

_He didn’t answer. Instead he turned away, grabbed his jacket, and left._

_Jeff sat there and stared after him long after the door slammed._

\---

Summer, 1983. 

The apartment was a sweltering box when Kyle got home. He shucked off his jacket, dumping his keys on the breakfast bar and eyeing the ceiling fan swirling lazily in the middle of the room which was hardly doing anything to help the heat.

The night had been perplexing; the call had come in at around eight, just after Jeff had left for work. Strange situation at the mall. Kyle had arrived thinking it would be a homicide, a madman on the loose. Maybe a fight. He didn’t expect the FBI and a SWAT team and over a thousand missing people.

He pulled off his tie, toeing off his shoes and socks on his way to the bed that took up most of the room. Jeff lay there now, chest gently rising and falling in slumber, oblivious to the whirr of the ceiling fan and the weary cop’s arrival. 

Kyle wanted to wake him, and he didn’t. Wanted to let him know he was home safe, but didn’t want the questions that would inevitably come. 

He unbuttoned his shirt and threw it into the laundry basket, stepping out of his dress trousers and draping them over a chair. Jeff stirred as the belt buckle jingled and clattered against the wood. He tossed his pager onto the bedside table.

Kyle decided to wake him.

He slid into bed beside him, looping an arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. He was warm, the skin soft and firm and littered with moles and freckles. He had that silky, translucent skin that always looked fragile. Like porcelain. Jeff Angel was made of the finest bone china.  
“Jeff,” whispered, fingertips finding the hem of his shirt and sliding underneath, caressing his flat stomach and the sharp jut of his hip. He shook him gently. The younger man stirred, groaning, waking slowly at first, then quickly when realisation struck.  
“Kyle?” his voice was thick with sleep.  
“Hey.”

Jeff found his hand beneath his shirt and gave it a squeeze, lacing their fingers together, “thank God,” he sighed, “am I allowed to ask?”  
“Not tonight,” he pressed kisses to Jeff’s neck, along his shoulders, the stretched neck of his shirt exposing more flesh than was good for either of them. The younger man shivered, whining quietly when Kyle sucked a bruising kiss onto his sensitive neck.  
“Stop,” he said, though he didn’t mean it.  
“You really want me to?”  
“No,” Jeff breathed, voice hitching when his lover’s broad hand ran up his chest, catching a nipple on it's path and eventually resting on his clavicle, fingertips dipping into the spot between his collarbones. He felt rather than heard the chuckle that this elicited from his lover, turning over to face him and taking in his tired eyes, unshaven face, and tousled hair that looked as though he’d been nervously carding a hand through it all evening.  
“Are you okay?”  
“Never better.”  
“Don’t lie,” Jeff frowned.  
“Stop talking,” Kyle smirked, capturing his lips in a soft kiss, “too many people talking tonight.”  
“I wanna know what happened,” Jeff whispered, looping his arms around Kyle’s neck, “tell me.”  
“In the morning.”  
“It is the morning,” he argued. 

Kyle sighed, shook his head, “I need you,” he murmured, going in to kiss him again, and there weren’t many phrases that Jeff loved to hear more than that. He obliged, meeting his partner’s mouth in a kiss that soon became heated, soon had him reaching for a condom and lube, fingertips skimming over the loaded pistol in Kyle’s bedside drawer. _‘For protection’_ , he’d always say when Jeff caught his eye, ‘ _to quiet the ghosts from my past’._

Hungry kisses devoured his neck as Kyle tugged the thin cotton tee over his head, rolling Jeff onto his back with ease, searching hands finding their way into his shorts, squeezing and caressing. Sex with Kyle was all-consuming, overwhelming, a riot of pleasure and a feast for his senses; Jeff had cried after their first time from the sheer joy of it all. Of feeling wanted, actually _wanted_ , for probably the first time in his life.

Slick fingers probed at his entrance, and he whimpered at the sensation as he was breached, hands finding Kyle’s shoulders and holding tight as the older man worked him open, peppering sweet kisses to his face and neck. Jeff ran his hands across Kyle’s shoulders, fingers grasping at the fabric of the white undershirt he wore, and the cop pulled away long enough to pull it over his head and toss it haphazardly somewhere around the room. His shorts followed soon enough, and he pumped a generous amount of lube into his palm. Jeff felt himself salivating at the sight of his lover slicking himself up in the half light of the room, entrance twitching with need as Kyle tore open a condom and rolled it over the head of his cock, stroking himself once, twice, three times to adjust the fit.

He leaned down to capture Jeff’s lips in a heated kiss, the blond’s long legs opening invitingly as he settled between them. Jeff’s back arched as they joined, calloused hands grasping his own as he keened, eyes screwed shut against the pain that quickly blurred into pleasure, tip-toeing that fine line that never ceased to make his mind go blank. 

The moon gradually fell from the sky, shooed away by the dawn, the sun ever giving chase to the darkness. 

\---  
_Fall, 1982._

_A rain of leaves that had just turned, blown away by the wind in the City of Angels. Even though, to Kyle Hyde, this city only had one angel, and he belonged in his arms._

_“Are you sure about this?”_

_Ever the gentleman._

_“How many times? Yeah, of course I am.”_

_Ever the spoiled brat, sass the size of a planet resting on his shoulders. His Atlas of attitude. Kyle must’ve frowned, because Jeff looped languid arms around his neck and offered him a reassuring smile._

_“Please?”_

_And how could he possibly refuse?_

_With a tentative kiss and long, slender legs hitched on his hips, they made love as the city of angels faded to Autumn._

\---

Summer, 1983.

Kyle’s pager beeped around 8am, and he quickly reached for the thing before its incessant noise could rouse Jeff, who was curled up beside him, one of the bedsheets wrapped tightly around his slender form. It was times like these that Kyle wished he had a camera; Jeff looked radiant in his sleep. 

(Not that he didn’t look radiant the rest of the time but this was _different)_. 

Delicate and soft and vulnerable. Fragile. Somebody worth protecting. He may have disagreed four years back when they’d met at Hotel Dusk; circumstances sparking hatred and frustration as Kyle was framed for stealing his money. The kid was clever, one of the main reasons why Kyle was so shocked when he’d stumbled across him at Christmas, but even back then the salesman that he once was had seen _something_ in him.

He glanced at the pager. _‘Report Due Tuesday_ ’ was all that the readout said. He tossed it back on the table. It was Sunday. Work could wait. He turned his attention back to Jeff, who was slowly blinking awake, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, bed-hair in full attendance.  
“Work?” he asked sleepily, propping himself up on one elbow. Kyle cast an eye over the hickeys littering his collarbones. He hoped that Jeff would be able to wear a button-down shirt for a while. Or a turtleneck.

In summer.

“Yeah.”  
“You need to call them?”  
“Eventually.”

Jeff sat up, stretched, yawned.  
“You gonna tell me about last night?”  
“Just woke up, Jeff,” Kyle warned. The younger man smirked, shrugged, moved slowly to straddle his lover’s hips, slender hands splayed on his bare chest.  
“Want me to wake you up all the way?” he asked with a sultry grin. 

Damn kid knew exactly how to get what he wanted, knew just how to push Kyle’s buttons to get his way. He reached up to thread a hand through soft hair which was getting just that bit too long, and pull Jeff into a gentle kiss. 

“It was a hostage situation,” he said when they parted, “but not in the way you’d think.”  
“What do you mean?”

Kyle tried to recall the events of last night. Teams entering the building on tethers-- _tethers, as if something was going to grab them_ \--and finding the mall fully lit, the piped music oozing out of the speakers like electronic sludge, slowed down and crackling with no explanation. Cash registers still locked up tight, storefronts open and awaiting visitors. No signs of robbery. No signs of struggle.

The basement, filled with the sleeping form of every single missing person. 

Only one fatality. 

“We found everyone, 1,023 people, asleep in the basement,” Kyle explained. He felt a chill, thinking back to the way he’d gone cold from head to toe the second he’d stepped into the basement to investigate. The only thing between him and a thousand mall-goers an eerie mist that seemed to flood the lower level, encasing each person in an icy tomb. Every one of them prone, lying on their backs, waking the second a police officer uttered a single syllable.

“Asleep?” 

“It was strange,” Kyle looked up at Jeff, “every person in the same position, all laying in the same direction. When they woke up, it was like...like they still thought they were in the mall. We heard a group of girls saying that they wanted to head to Sear’s. Another woman wondering which way the Orange Julius was from there...we questioned a couple of people on the spot, but they just stared at us blankly. Wondered why we were interrupting their shopping, asking if this was a survey. They had absolutely no idea how they’d come to be in the basement. They didn’t even seem to realise they were down there at all. They all had a whole day’s worth of missing time. We took as much info as we could, then they just went back to what they were doing.”

Kyle moved to sit up and Jeff clambered off of him, mind racing as the cop looped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close.  
“I can’t believe you went in there,” was all that Jeff could come up with, fear of the whole ordeal rendering him unable to think of much else to say.  
“I had to,” Kyle shrugged, “anyway, we followed them back up there. The Feds started getting jumpy. One of the riot guys yelled from the basement, so I went back down. There was a guy there; we thought he was still asleep. Turns out he was dead. Asphyxiation.”  
“What?!”  
“Creepiest thing is, this guy was a wanted criminal. Remember that serial rapist? The one who was on the news for following teenage girls home from shopping malls?”  
“Shit, I think I saw something about him on TV the other day.”  
“Yeah,” Kyle nodded, “he’s dead.”  
“Seriously?”  
“Out of a thousand people, the only fatality is a wanted criminal.”  
“But why are you treating it as a hostage situation? I don’t understand...do you think he did it?”  
“No,” Kyle fought the urge to shiver, “something took those people hostage, but it wasn’t him.”  
“Kyle…”  
“It's out of my hands - up to the FBI now,” he sighed, “don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. We still haven’t issued a statement to the press.”  
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jeff sighed happily as a warm hand came to rest on his waist, “do you have to turn in a report?”  
“Yeah, by Tuesday,” Kyle sighed, “sometimes I wonder why the hell I came back to this job. Why didn’t I just stay a salesman?”  
“I will admit, I do miss the cute little jacket,” Jeff smirked, “although I like the suit more.”  
“Of course.”

Warm, comfortable silence settled between them, threatened only by the ebb of worry at the edge of Jeff’s consciousness. Kyle’s job was dangerous, he could be shot or stabbed by some lunatic criminal any time.

“I know what you're thinking,” Kyle murmured, “but anybody could be attacked at any time, Jeff, not just me. Not just a cop,” he brushed patterns lazily into Jeff's soft skin, “but I'm always coming back. I'll always be coming home to you, one way or another.”

Jeff didn't say anything--didn't know what to say, wasn't used to actually being wanted by another person, to be valued and loved. If Kyle let on he didn't say anything, just tightened his grip on Jeff's slender frame as they lay in safe, comfortable silence, the only sound around them the sound of a city just waking up.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: This is a repost of a different version of this fic that I did because I got kinda drunk one night and rewrote a bunch of lines. Previously titled "1983" :)
> 
> Okay so I was getting heavy into Floral Shoppe and this spooky thing popped into my head. I don't even know if Jeff/Kyle is a thing but it totally should be? Don't look at me TTATT
> 
> Tumblr @screemahon


End file.
